Pommerndatenbank - the database for genealogy in Pommern

church books and civil records

Welcome at the Pommerndatenbank

The goal of the church book database with records about the Pomeranian church books and civil records is to provide the Pomeranian genealogists with the most important tool they need for their research in a free and easy way.
In the last decade finally all important archives with Pomeranian church books have published inventories where the researchers can find information about the holdings. But these publications are only in possession of a few researchers --especially outside of Germany-- and are not so easy to access. Beside this the Pomeranian churchs books were spread a lot over Germany and Poland as the result of WWII --if they survived at all-- that only checking all holdings can permit a nearly exhausting answer. In addition to the major archives there are still a lot vicarages and civil offices in Germany and Poland that have Pomeranian records and where it is hard to get an overview at all. Much less known are the records that are in private property, in libaries etc.

The Pommerndatenbank church and civil records is therefore a central point to make all these information about Pomeranian church books and civil records at about 300 locations available for the public.
With now over 8,500 data records the database is still a bit away from this goal since the systematic gathering of information from all the published sources is not complete now. The records of the major state and church archives (Greifswald, Berlin, Stettin, Köslin, Leipzig) are quite extensive but not complete and not always the timeframes are given. Only a part of the civil records in Poland and from Germany only the records in Berlin without the years are contained in the database. Quite complete are the records of the vicarages in Germany (always only in regard to Pommern) but sometimes not quite up to date.
Not covered are the stread records in private hands, the film numbers of the LDS (Mormones) and the batch numbers.

In the next months there will be spend a lot efforts to complete these information as good as possible. At that time (end of 2001/beginning of 2002) the database will play out its advantages like easy corrections and additions and the cooperation of the interested researchers in gathing as complete information as possible.